Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

I got my second letter regarding copyright infringement today, and as before I am innocent. I wrote back to tell them that, but frankly I have had enough. I am looking for ways to protect myself.

This interesting article was posted today:

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...-peers-081020/

It looks like The Pirate Bay is randomly framing IP addresses for copyright infringement, to make it impossible to tell real downloaders from fake ones. That's all well and good if you are a pirate, but means innocent people like me get hit with copyright infringement claims :(

I have looked into using PeerGuardian, but when you look at the list of IP addresses it blocks, it's 52% of the internet. That seems like massive overkill, and surely disreputable companies like Media Defender and BayTSP are using IP addresses that are not blocked anyway.

How can I stop this happening? Is there any way I can claim money back for the time I have to waste responding to these bogus claims? What if it goes to court, can I get free legal representation? Can I stop VM giving away my details?

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Ignore them. don't get into any communication with them. just ignore them.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

NO, that is not good advice. These people don't muck around, they have secured one default judgement of £16,000 because somebody failed to turn up in court, or potentially ignored the letters from Davenport Lyons.

In response to your post about TBP, I have commented here.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34658667-post176.html

You'll need legal representation if you believe you are innocent. I'll find the company prepared to do it and post back here.

EDIT: This is the post you need to look at, which you should already be familiar with as you have posted a number of times in that thread, visit the link included in the post.

2nd EDIT: This thread may need merging with the thread linked to from my first edit, as it seems to be the same subject matter.

3rd EDIT: Don't use the term peerguardian here, or in court, as some may get the impression that your claims of innocence are not as white as you make them.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Good advice and well presented unlike some dubious advice given out in this Thread. :tu:

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

top advice as toto stated DO NOT IGNORE!

@cook your link imo is another interesting defence to muddy the water

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Do you have a wireless router? Is it secured using WPA2? Have you changed your password to a secure one (8+ characters, numbers and letters and no dictionary words) since you received the previous letter?

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Do not ignore as if it gets to court the Civil Court Judge can look upon it as an admonishment of guilt and rule in favour of the plaintiff.

DO NOT IGNORE IT, DENY IT , DO ANYTHING ELSE, BUT DO NOT IGNORE IT!!

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

I have a wireless router, but it is only on WPA because WPA2 does not work. I don't know if it's the router or my wifi card.

I just discovered a program which can give you the default WPA2 key of Sky routers based on their MAC addresses, which of course they broadcast. Scary stuff.

Thanks for the link, I will contact them next time. I'm really looking for ways to stop this legal harassment with the minimum amount of fuss though. Why should I waste my time dealing with it?

The last time I wrote back and asked for compensation for my wasted time, but didn't hear anything. Next time I'll try Small Claims Court if they don't pay up.

I suppose it depends how you put it over. It would be interesting to find out what IP address they were using, so it can be added to the block list. Presumably they would have to tell you.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

If you're innocent, what will peerguardian do? AFAIK peerguardian will just stop them connecting to you to verify you're sharing the file. If you're not actually sharing/downloading anything, they won't try connecting so peerguardian won't block anything :p:

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Why should you waste your time? Good question, but the answer should be obvious, you're at risk of being taken to court, losing, and having a black mark on your credit rating at the very least, and being substantially out of pocket as a consequence.

You owe it to yourself to at least contact the firm who are prepered to work pro bono to beat this thing. :)

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

@cook
the reason why you must waste your time is that this is civil law you are guilty until you can prove your innocence,that is why if you do nothing the judgement goes against you and you end up with a hefty bill.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

i wouldnt say you're guilty until proven innocent. It's more likely that the person taking you to court has some form of evidence to back the claim up, and as there is no evidence going against theirs, then they win the case. A civil case requires less proof you did something compared to a criminal case, and afaik, you aren't entitled to free legal represenation in civil cases.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

That is/was my understanding of the law, but it appears that the actual situation is that you can simply make a list of 25,000 IP addresses, force ISPs to give up subscriber details and then spam those unfortunately innocents with demands for money. Hopefully some will just pay up or ignore you. It's some new kind of scam/business model.

They seem to have every angle covered. If you tell them you are innocent, they drop the claims so they can't loose. Next time I get a letter I'm going to demand restitution in the hopes of breaking their business model.

I just can't believe it's legal. Surely there must be some law against doing this, or at least some consequence of accusing thousands of people but only bringing cases against the ones who don't respond?

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

dont know the specifics, but i assume that to get the name / address for the person who was using a specific IP at a set date/time requires a court order. Now to get a court order, I would also assume some form of evidence would need to be given (granted this could be made up).

On the other hand, it's pretty easy to guess which houses have cable and which do not, after all, how many homes have a cable box on the outside but no cable services? So it could easily be a scam where they use the assumption that someone in the house has downloaded something illegal at some point.

Does the letter give specifics to what you downloaded? Usually they'll give the method of sharing (eg torrent/p2p app), what the file was and a date/time they found you were sharing it.

The main problem with cases like this is, how do you exactly defend yourself? If you prove you weren't in the house on the date/time they say you were sharing the file, that won't prove you weren't sharing it as you don't have to be at a computer to share the file.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

No, your comment in bold is not correct and its very dangerous to assume that. Evidence is supplied to the judge at the hearing for IP data access, and to each ISP, they can't just turn up with a list of IP addresses in the hope they can secure their request, they must supply evidence, or a legal statement to that effect. There is a very specific process in play.

These are experienced law firms that represent rights holders, reputation is everything.

Have you written to them yet and actually asked for the evidence against you, have they responded?

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

This is absolutely obscene, i think the approach that the Pirate Bay is taking is way out of order.

Getting other people into trouble just to protect people who are stupid enough to download from such a horrible tracker in the first place.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Just a suggestion, but have you thought about approaching a paper?
I'm sure the Sun would love the little guy against the big evil and wrong corporation story, may even give you a few quid for your trouble.
At least it should get these guys off your back quite quickly.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

pirate bay are ultimately looking after there customers, i dont understand your comments do you object to downloading or just downloading from the bay?

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

They cannot accuse someone unless they connect to a peer and actually manage to download some data. so if a random ip is given and they try to connect and they are not sharing that file they cannot accuse them of any wrongdoing as they will not be sharing any data so its a good way of doing things !

Impz

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

I can asure you it ain't piratebay's fault they are protecting the so called legit peers lol they block bad peers from collecting ip's they can only do so much on blocking theses "bad" peers nothing to do with piratebay so you must have got caught lol

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

That's an interesting idea, although it might have to be a slightly more intelligent paper rather than the Beano-for-grown-ups that is The Sun...

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

a newspaper snob and a illegal downloader (alledgedly) the plot thickens :rolleyes:

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Keep it nice people ;)

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Sorry but you can't qualify passing the Sun in front of your eyes as reading...

(waits for the flames...)

:D:D:D:D

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Most people just look at the pictures (well, on one of the pages, anyway.....;) )

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Can they count to three or is that why there straight in front of you when you open that paper. :D

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Sun exclusive

Forum Moderators fail to spot off topic thread shocker

-

Suggestions that Cable forum mods have been infiltrated by left wing ,asylum seeking homosexual, terrorists were proved to be true this evening.... allegedly

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

I think your on your way to forum hell:D

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

ignoring them is an option but I would simply reply with a recorded letter saying show me the proof, and be firm that you will not accept an ip listed on a tracker as a proof and you confident thats not admissable court evidence.

The whole thing with using ips on trackers to claim FULL compensation is very dodgy since they claiming you have distributed a FULL copy of whats protected based on your ip been listed, the only real distributer is the initial seeder which is more often than not a employee of the company in question when its software.

---------- Post added at 18:53 ---------- Previous post was at 18:52 ----------

In regards to davenport as far as I am aware their case is so weak that 'anyone' who replies has had their case dropped. They basically relying on winning by default.

---------- Post added at 18:58 ---------- Previous post was at 18:53 ----------

This is actually good assuming noone actually gets convicted wrongfully, imagine the consequences of solicitors consistently going after the wrong people and losing in court? eventually it would be decided using ips from trackers is no longer reliable and enough and it will mean they have to actually do proper work to go after people.

I could connect to a tracker for a game, deliberatly let it download one peice of the game and start sending it out so my ip is listed but then abort and delete it all, in that scenario I have not downloaded a copy of the game, not distributed a copy of the game, and not used a copy of the game but they may well go after me and would lose. It is also extremly easy to spoof ips in torrents, one very popular client has it as a built in feature.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Anybody read about the elderly couple threatened by Atari when it was claimed the couple had downloaded Race 07? They didn't want to listen, claimed they had an IP address that proved they'd been downloading Race 07, and only rescinded the claim when a magazine intervened. It's crazy what companies can get away with.

Link to BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7697898.stm

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

No - hadn't heard about that one.

Got a link?

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

See my edit. ;)

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

I'd tread very carefully if I were you...;)

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Oh, this is getting GOOD!!! :D

This is the RIAA trying to take a legal shotgun to Harvard, unsuccessfully.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20081030/0203582685.shtml

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Next time I will include an invoice for my time with my letter to them.

Re: Defending myself against bogus copyright infringement claims
 

Technically you can only claim fee's if you defend yourself in court, and you win the case and the judge orders the prosecution to pay all costs.

By all means try and invoice Davenport Lyons, I'm not sure it will get you anywhere. :)